This month's newsletter focuses on some tips and tools to help students navigate the complex digital world. As more and more information gets published in digital spaces, we need to help our students develop skills to mine through streams and feeds for reliable and high-quality material. This is no simple task. But our challenge is to show students how literacy looks in our content areas, in public arenas, and in digital spaces. Literacy is more than text-based information.

How do we challenge ourselves and student to think about advertisements, music, video, news media, radio, Facebook/Instagram feeds, and Tweets. Twitter is an amazing way to teach about word choice, argument, and audience. With only 140 characters, the speaker usually says a lot with very little - just 140 characters.

Here are a couple tools that might help students differentiate between valid arguments and those founded on false claims.

TEN QUESTIONS FOR FAKE NEWS DETECTION

THE BELIEVING-DOUBTING GAME (analyzing argument)

Project Look Sharp is a media literacy initiative that provides resources for teachers to engage students in the practice of evaluating all forms of media and the messages they present. I have included a few links that might help you think about how we use media in our classrooms. In addition to deciding the educational and academic value of the source, we must also teach students to evaluate the medium as a means to communicate to its audience.

12 Basic Ways to Integrate Media Literacy into Any Curriculum

6 Key Concepts in Media Analysis

Examining Credibility of Information on the Internet

Lesson Plan Ideas

Common Sense Media is a great website with lesson plans and articles to teach students about safe use of digital resources. Some examples include issues related to copyright and one's digital footprint. The lesson plans are presented in several formats - print and web-based interaction. Common Sense also provides resources for technology integration in the classroom. Sometimes digital devices cause more anxiety than usefulness, but it all starts with planning for success.

Here are a few articles that I found useful:

• Dealing with the Digital Distraction
• Managing Classroom Technology

The Critical Media Project provides resources to help teachers and student evaluate media and its influence on how we develop our identities, interact with one another, and understand the world. While the content is sometimes controversial, it is important that we building classroom spaces where we can discuss complex issues with our students.

Here is the direct link to their Class Activities page.